Ethics and Discourse theory

Speech-acts.

I describe the speech-act as the social realization of interaction between a speaker and at least one listener. The performance of a speech-act needs at least two persons, one who speaks and at least one other person who listens.

What conditions must be met in order that the social realization of dignity in a series of speech-acts may be assessed positively? To demonstrate my understanding of speech-acts and of a series of speech-acts I will use the following Table 1:

Speech-act: Speaking Person: Listening Person:

1 A B

2 B A

3 A B

4 B A

N A or B B or A

If each line realizes the social choice of the speaking person to speak freely and with liberty and the social choice of the listening person to listen, then we can assess the equality of freedom and liberty of the two social choices involved in this speech-act.

If A or B chooses not to speak and B or A cannot listen, then equality of dignity is socially realized if the person that would have listened takes the social choice to accept the social choice of the person not to speak. In this case, there is no social realization of a speech-act, or a series of speech-acts by the persons A and B ends.

Equal dignity is also socially realized if A and B take the social choice to end their series of speech-acts.

Let me now investigate the social realization of equal rights of A and B in a speech-act. If A in Speech-act 1 - see Table 1 - accepts the right of B to speak in Speech-act 2, the equality of rights is socially realized in the speech-acts. How about assessment of the social realization of the equality of other rights that concern A and B?

Take the example that A claims something from B in Speech-act 1. B listens and takes the social choice to agree in Speech-act 2 to the claim made by A. If B makes the social choice to agree to the claim made by A and gives something to A, then the dignity of B is secured because the social choice to give something away is an autonomous, that is a freely self-determined, decision by B. The dignity of A is secured, not because A receives what A wanted to have, but because he receives something from B based on a social choice made by B that A respects.

What would be the case if A were to claim something that would violate the equality of rights of B and of other persons? Let us consider the example that A claims that B and several other persons do not have the right to publicly say what they think of gender equality and only A has the right to speak on gender? In this case, there is no equal dignity and there is no social realization of a speech-act in dignity, because one possibility-condition of dignity is the social realization of equality. A violates the equality of rights because A claims a right to inequality. A violates both dignities, the dignity of A, because A does not follow the rule of equality, and the dignity of B, and that of all the other persons concerned, because they are discriminated.

For the positive assessment of the social realization of a speech-act in dignity, A and B must claim equal freedom and equal rights for each other. What is the case if A and B agree to violate the dignity of others by claiming that some right is exclusively given to them and not to others? Let us imagine that A and B claim that only they would be allowed to speak on some topic. The answer would be like the case where A claims something that would violate the equality of rights of B and other persons. A and B violate the equality of rights because A and B claim a right to inequality. Claiming inequality of rights, A and B violate their own dignity because the equality of rights is also a possibility-condition for the dignity of A and B.

How do things stand with dignity, if A or B does not know that a claim violates the equality of rights, and no other persons are present to tell them so? This case, where it is not at all clear what A and B say or claim or do in their speech-acts, leads to the insight that to assess the social realization of the dignity of a speech-act we must learn some rules that help us assess what is going on.

What are the rules to identify a claim as a claim as legitimate or illegitimate, as right, or wrong, unjust or just? The social realization of the justification of an unjust claim as justified and the social realization of protesting against this concrete situation of injustice and claiming justice are old business of humanity. I give an example from ancient Africa.

The first written testimony of the use of the word “way” or “path” as a metaphor for conduct or lifestyle we find in Egypt. What becomes the ethical doctrine of the two ways, the way of justice and the way of injustice, we find in the Egyptian text The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant. The tale was written during the time of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom (twenty-first to seventeenth century BC), during the 12th Dynasty (twentieth to eighteenth century BC) (Jeffers, Chike. 2013. “Embodying Justice in Ancient Egypt: The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant as a Classic of Political Philosophy.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 (3): 421–442. doi:10.1080/09608788.2013.77160. 422). The tale itself plays out during the intermediate period between the Old and the Middle Kingdom (twenty-second to twenty-first century BC), a period of “transition and change marked by a trickling down of power and customs from the monarchy to the common people” (Ariadne Argyros. 21 September 2020. https://www.thecollector.com/first-intermediate-period-of-egypt/). The nine speeches of Khunanup illustrate the difficulties the powerless peasant encountered when unabashedly seeking justice from a powerful official. Khunanup demands that the political authority fulfil its leadership duties, that is be a “leader, safeguard, and creator of good” (Jeffers. 2013. 429). A peasant named Khunanup from an oasis near Cairo is on his way to the capital and runs into Nemtinakht, a subordinate of the High Steward Rensi. Nemtinakht wants to rob Khunanup of his trading goods. Nemtinakht narrows the small path by putting his barley in the way of Khunanup and arranges a seemingly just legitimation to rob the peasant. Khunanup tries to travel the small path between the river and the barley crops of Nemtinakht, when one of Khunanup’s donkeys eats a bit of the barley. Nemtinakht takes the donkey, Khunanup protests and Nemtinakht takes all his donkeys. Khunanup protests and is beaten. He goes to Rensi to protest again. Rensi - who at the king’s demand only pretended not to do anything about the petition - presents the recorded nine petitions to the king, who tells Rensi to judge the case. The judgment awards Khunanup all of Nemtinakht’s property (ibid. 424).

The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant stands in line with a pre-existing tradition of thinking about morality and politics in ancient Egypt and this literary genre is called “instructions” (ibid. 425). Usually, a wise king instructs his young son to do what is just, and to advance the officials of the kingdom so that they act by the laws of the king. This kind of instruction is very elitist and elitist instructions to princes, kings, and emperors will reign the centuries of Antiquity, the European Middle Ages and even the philosopher of the Enlightenment Emmanuel Kant did not claim the principle “one man, one woman, one queer, one vote”. Kant writing in Germany in 1797 and attentively watching the French Revolution evolving was sceptic about realizing democracy (Immanuel Kant. The Conflict of the Faculties. Der Streit der Fakultäten. Translation and Introduction by Mary J. Gregor. Abaris Books, Inc. 1979.). Kant encourages the autocratic monarchs to comply with their duty “to treat the people according to principles which are commensurate with the spirit of libertarian laws…” that is to reign in a republican – not in a democratic - way. Kant is not thinking about the single citizen taking part in legislation (ibid. points 6, 8, and 10). Kant wants the philosophers to instruct the monarchs, not the citizens. It took till 1948, with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) that the individual person became subject of international law. The Preamble of the UDHR claims: “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world… Now, therefore, The General Assembly, proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction” (http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/).

It is the individual person, indeed every individual person, and not only organs of society and the institutions of the Member States of the United Nations that is called to promote respect for Human Rights, justice and peace by teaching and education. Every individual person is called to promote respect for the equal dignity, freedom, and rights for all human beings by teaching and education.

In the 1970ies, Jürgen Habermas’ philosophy of communicative competence leads to the development of an understanding of speech-acts as the social realization of dignity. When analysing the social realization of speech-acts, Habermas from the beginning used the concept of “claim to validity” (Habermas, Jürgen. 1971a. Vorbereitende Bemerkungen zu einer Theorie der kommunikativen Kompetenz. In Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie – Was leistet die Systemforschung?, edited by Jürgen Habermas and Niklas Luhman, 101–141. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. 137). What the speaker A in the first speech-act of a series of speech-acts says to the listener B, the listener B who turns to speak in the following speech-act must investigate in a series of speech-acts with A. This investigative dialogue is about identifying the interpretations of the world, the assertions, explanations, and legitimations of A as “claims to validity” and the examination whether the claiming person is able to account for these claims to validity or not (ibid.). These interactions in a series of speech-acts are based on social choices of equal freedoms and rights. As speech-acts of communicatively competent speakers they contribute to the design of the general structures that would characterize the ideal discourse situation (ibid. 140). Habermas closed his 1971 article with the insight that we cannot say a priori whether a speech-act would ever realize a form of life where the social realization of the ideal discourse situation is practiced (ibid. 141). It is true: we never know a priori how B will receive a sentence spoken by A and how A would receive B’s reactions. I strongly agree with Habermas that every social realization of a speech-act in dignity enhances the social structures for further social realizations of dignity.

Communicative competence

From October 1986 to February 1987, I attended the philosophical seminar on truth-theories given by J. Habermas and K.-O. Apel at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. From the gentle tolerance of Habermas, who encouraged every participant to contribute to the discussion, I learned to respect and value even the apparently most absurd discourse contributions. I modelled myself after Habermas to learn to practice empathy in philosophical discourse. Empathy helps make sense of sentences that otherwise would have left the speaker in the social isolation of incomprehensibility. A listener who asks the speaker about the sentence that he or she did not understand, or who communicates a sense that he or she inferred, helps realize the speaker’s dignity. I was pleased that Habermas gave us only one article as preparation for the discussion in his seminar, namely his article on some preparatory remarks for a theory of communicative competence (Habermas 1971a). He did not advise us to study the volumes of his Theory of Communicative Action. Habermas modestly saw his Theory of Communicative Action (Habermas 1981) as an attempt and a suggestion that need to be discussed, and he showed embarrassment and disappointment over the cult status of public veneration that his principal work had reached.

In November 2017, I reread his article. In the article Habermas wants to construct what he calls the general structure of universal pragmatics or a theory of communicative competence that is the reconstruction of the system of rules that makes speech-acts possible (Habermas 1971a: 102). In other words, Habermas tries to construct the possibility-condition of speech-acts as a system of rules. The last sentence of the article admits that this kind of universal pragmatics, this kind of system of norms that guarantees the performance of speech-acts remains to be constructed (ibid. 141). Nevertheless, Habermas enters a discourse with language philosophy that contributes important aspects to answer the question what we do with words. Indeed, we see from the beginning of the article that Habermas explicitly refers to Austin’s concept of speech-acts (ibid. 102). He underlines J. R. Searle’s insistence that “speaking a language is performing speech-acts” (ibid. 103). Habermas also adopts Searle’s interpretation of Austin’s distinction of the locutionary and illocutionary speech-acts, calling the locutionary aspect linguistic and the illocutionary aspect institutional (ibid.). The fact that the locutionary speech-act and the illocutionary speech-act are performed together leads Habermas to assess the importance of this hypothesis taken from Searle, that is the practical unity of the speech-act (ibid.). In the seminar, Habermas repeatedly insisted on this concept of the practical unit of the speech-act as the basic unit of speech. He insisted that we must investigate the speech-act as generating the condition for realizing sentences and at the same time as the realization of a sentence. We must refute the hypothesis that there are two distinct semantic studies and follow Searle in that we hold it to be an analytical truth that it is not possible to separate the semantic studies of meaning from the study of the performance of speech-acts (ibid. 103). This fundamental conviction of Habermas, namely, to start philosophizing based on this pragmatic unit of the speech-act, came as a big surprise to me in the seminar. I did not really anticipate that Habermas had indeed accepted the linguistic turn. He was thinking based on speech-acts. Apel did not understand that approach and was constantly reminded of this fact by Habermas in a very kind but firm way. I especially remember one episode: On the afternoon of January 26, 1987, Habermas turned to Apel telling him that “You cannot claim to realize the linguistic turn and then continue speaking with Husserl! It does not really work that way! You must make clear from where you start, you are doing awareness philosophy but not language philosophy, and you must stay consistent.” Apel was a bit intimidated and agreed with a shy “yes,” only to continue a bit later mixing phenomenology, semantics, and language games.

It is true, Austin described his concept of illocutionary speech-acts with examples like performing “acts, such as informing, ordering, warning, undertaking, etc., i.e., utterances which have a certain (conventional) force” (Austin 1971: 108). Austin does not take an interest in systematically investigating and describing the term “conventional force.” Habermas proves once again to be a philosopher of sociology and calls the rules for this pragmatic use of performing, that is, for example, giving information, ordering, warning, undertaking, etc., the “institutional sense” of the speech-act (Habermas 1971a: 103). Habermas calls the rules that generate the institutional sense “pragmatic universals”. This term must not confuse us, the rules of language are empirical; Habermas did not accept the two empires of Kant, the empire of experience and the empire of rules (ibid. 110). He continues to call the most important pragmatic part of a speech-act a “performative sentence” (ibid. 110) and regrets that neither analytical philosophy nor linguistics were so far able to present a complete system of speech-acts (ibid. 111). Habermas now contents himself with following Austin’s method of describing concepts by giving examples for institutional speech-acts: I thank you; I remind you, I curse you (ibid. 113). Habermas is not only the philosopher of sociology, he is also educated and cultured in the worldview of abstract principles, the theories of universal rules and imperatives common to continental European habits enhanced with a Protestant’s sense of duty and a quasi-form of life that does not finish a thought without claiming universal validity for the said. The worldview that prospers in the German-speaking regions bordering Mediterranean cultures allows us to feel satisfied by simply speaking of language games and the use of words in language and does not like the ambitious use of concepts like “pragmatic universals” (ibid.).

When talking about the task of a future theory of communicative competence and of pragmatic universals, Habermas all of a sudden makes a very important contribution to the development of language philosophy understood as the philosophy of communication:

He explicitly introduces a second participant to the performance of a speech-act, namely the listener (ibid. 103). The person that listens in language philosophy is rarely ever explicitly mentioned or even systematically taken into consideration. Rarely is the listener recognized as a possibility-condition for discourse. Usually, the listener gets passed over in silence although the successful performance of a speech-act by a speaker requires a listener. Habermas introduces the couple speaker/listener into the discourse of language philosophy (ibid.). This attention to the couple speaker/listener - to speakers and listeners in general - in my eyes is the fundamental contribution to a theory of communicative competence.

The performance or realization of a speech-act needs a speaker and a listener. The speaker/listener couple is necessary for performance of the elementary unit of speech, the speech-act. This I hold to be an analytic truth just as the a priori of the sense of the sentence. The speaker/listener couple as the elementary unity of speech generates the conditions for performing speech-acts. The history of speech-acts is part of the history of the world. The speaker/listener couple allows us to speak of the institution of language in the sense that two persons form a group that follows the common rules of their language.

The most important contribution made by Habermas to human communication with language and speech-acts consists of the unceasing analysis of the social settings of speech-acts. He starts to speak about the performance of a speech-act by describing the speech situation as a dyadic situation of communication, he speaks of speakers and listeners (Habermas 1971a: 103). One is allowed to suggest that the practical unit of communication is the speech-act and that at least two persons constitute this unit, the speaker and the listener.

Understanding and agreement in this communication that is a speech-act are not possible if the two involved persons are not equally ready to perform speech-acts (ibid. 105). The pragmatic unit of language, the speech-act of at least two persons who communicate in ordinary language, is called communicative action and must be distinguished from discourse (ibid. 115). Discourse is the kind of communication where agreement and understanding are generated by reasonably accounting for and justifying claims to validity (ibid.). Habermas calls this kind of reasoning discussing the problems of the claim that eventually again leads to an agreement of understanding. This kind of agreement of understanding regarding justified claims to validity may again produce simple speech-acts of communicative action (ibid.). Concerning the rules for discourse on claims to validity, Habermas claims that a discourse situation is free of any constraints, compulsions or force and admits one single obligation: a cooperative readiness and willingness of the discourse participants to reach agreement and understanding (ibid. 117). Habermas justifies the claim to this ideal speech-act situation by invoking the anticipation of this ideal speech-act situation (ibid. 122). Constructing a design for the speech-act seems to prove that realization of the anticipation is possible. The key concept in this construction of the speech-act is the true consensus of the discourse partners, and Habermas starts by giving a number of criteria that help distinguish a true consensus from a false consensus (ibid.). The truthfulness - not the truth - of the speaker constitutes an important criterion for a reasonable justification of a claim to the validity of her of his speech-act (ibid. 131). Truthfulness is described by Habermas as the qualification of speech-acts that are not the result of a deception or delusion on the part of the speaker (ibid.). How does truthfulness account for the reasonability of a justifying argument? We learn to use the expression “truthfulness” in our language not primarily as an exercise in thinking. The expression “truthfulness” is not used to replace some rational operation of thinking but is used to replace a certain kind of human behaviour. Human behaviour can be described not only with the categories “rational”, or “irrational”, but with many categories such as emotional, moral, juridical, social, political, etc. Another element in the construction of the anticipated ideal discourse setting is the qualification of the situation as free from constraints and force. The criterion for this freedom and liberty is the symmetrical allocation of the empowerment to speak, chose, and perform the speech-acts in the discourse (ibid. 137). Habermas speaks of an effective equality of chances and empowerment to speech-acts of the discourse partners (ibid.). Habermas anticipates the consensus that “would have to result” from an ideal discourse situation. He qualifies this anticipation as “counterfactual,” but nevertheless insists that “sound minds” would finally claim the truth-value true for propositions and claims after a long, free and “forceless communication” (Habermas, Jürgen. 1971b. Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie? Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Niklas Luhmann. In Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie – Was leistet die Systemforschung? edited by Jürgen Habermas and Niklas Luhman, 142–290. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. 223).

Claims and propositions have to be called “true” if rational persons would be forced by certainty and conviction to hold them as “true” (ibid. 222). Habermas seems to use the concept of the ideal discourse situation in the same way as Moore uses the concept of “the absolute good.” But “the absolute good” is no state of affairs that could be described, because “the absolute good, if it is a describable state of affairs, would be one which everybody, independent of his tastes and inclinations, would necessarily bring about or feel guilty for not bringing about. And I want to say that such a state of affairs is a chimera. No state of affairs has in itself what I would like to call the coercive power of an absolute judge” (Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2014. Lecture on Ethics. Edited with commentary by Eduardo Zamuner, Ermelinda Valentina Di Lascio and D. K. Levy. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell. 46). First, the absolute use of ethical concepts treats value judgments like facts (ibid. 49). Second, all efforts to determine the ideal discourse situation by constructing an intelligent, beautiful and complicated consensus design remain abstract anticipations and lack empirical validation. The social realization of living conditions that are worth being called human is too important to be obscured by the lack of an empirical assessment of the facts and cases. In this context I want to refer to Amartya Sen and underline his insistence that we have to assess issues of justice and equality of freedom on the basis of “assessments of social realizations, that is, on what actually happens” (Sen, Amartya. 2009. The Idea of Justice. London: Penguin Books. 410).

Discourse theory

On February 2, 1987 Habermas’ discourse theory was discussed in the seminar. Apel was in Israel and Habermas excused himself for not having reworked his article since 1971 (Habermas 1971a). Mr. Gerstenberg, a jurist, presented the article (ibid.). Habermas insisted that his discourse theory is not another kind of coherence theory of truth, because discourse takes into account the social conditions of the truth-finding procedure. He also criticized that Percy in his truth theory of evidence would not discuss its sensory perceptions. The correspondence theory of truth does not discuss the rules that decide on the correspondence or non-correspondence of fact and ideal. Constructivist and intuitionist theories associated Habermas with Lorenzen and called their theories a truth theory of evidence, something like a Platonic mathematical contemplation that does not regard the social conditions of its possibilities. Finally, Gerstenberg was allowed to start his presentation. The jurist wanted to present the criteria of rationality for the fair process of finding truth such as understandability of the claim to validity, acceptability and truthfulness. He explicitly wanted to exclude external social conditions of this procedure from his discussion. Habermas interrupted and insisted that Mr. Gerstenberg’s use of the concept “communicative competence” in connection with a claim of objectivity to this concept would need some clarification. The social conditions of the discourse that enable communication have to be discussed. The forms of communication in the procedure have to comply with fair social conditions for the procedure in order to realize communicative competence. Habermas was quite clear about the fact that the realization of a fair procedure, that is of ideal conditions for the discourse situation, constitutes the principal claim of discourse theory. Discourse theory would collapse if plausibility for the necessity of this principal claim cannot be achieved. Habermas accepts the use of language as the social context that conditions the use of concepts. We are taught how to use concepts and we cannot flee language to express our worldviews.

All of a sudden, Habermas postulates three steps in order to bring some structure into the discussion in the seminar:

1. Habermas starts to describe truth as fulfilment of a condition of validity.

2. He postulates that the claim to validity of something has to be understood as a claim to the realization of the validity-condition for this claim within a determined range of validity.

3. The claim that the validity-condition for the claim is realized within the scope of validity must be demonstrated in a discourse.

(Notes taken by Leher)

There is a new key concept, an important rule for legitimizing claims: the condition of validity. It is logical: by accepting that discourse is part of a social realization of rules and conditions, these rules and conditions have to be described and agreed on by the discourse partners. This is a requirement for the fairness of the discourse. Accepting that a claim to the validity of something realizes the conditions of validity for that claim to validity leads to a discussion of the fulfilment of the validity-condition. How is it possible to fulfil claims to validity? Habermas always insists on discussing the triad, always linking the terms “truth,” “claim to validity” and “condition of validity” when there is a philosophical discussion. Since Habermas is an authentic German philosopher, he does not use the light expression “discussing” but vehemently speaks of “problematizing” the claim that the condition of validity of a claim to validity is fulfilled.

The person who teaches how to use the word “good” translates expressions of approval into language. The discourse about what really matters to me, what is good and right shows the expressions of different convictions and claims to validity. Another way of leaving it up to the individual to spell out the grammar of what is “good” for him or her is to say that ethics speaks in the first person singular. One of the validity-conditions of claims of ethics in a discourse theory could be the claim that the sentences of ethics be brought into discourse by the individual person, who spells out what is “good”, in the first person singular. Ethics is the inquiry of what is good and deals also with aesthetics that is the inquiry what is beautiful, as with the inquiry into existential questions. What is good, what do I really want to do, what is valuable, what is the sense of life, are questions of ethics. Speaking of what really matters for my life, what is the sense of my life and death, what is happiness for me, etc. are questions about personal convictions and beliefs.

When we speak of behaviour and forms of life we speak of the use of expressions of sensations or opinions in a certain language. “’So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?’ - It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinion but in form of life” (Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2001. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell. I, paragraph 241). Habermas links the discourse about the claim to validity and the condition of validity to truthfulness and sometimes to truth. Yet, discourse theory is about “problematizing” and not about finding a consensus on truth. There is no correspondence between the claim and truth. The sentence says that it is true or false. Discourse theory discusses the legitimacy or validity of a claim by investigating the validity condition of the claim. When the discourse partners assess the legitimacy of a claim they agree “in the form of life”, they use language games of dignity and democracy and behave like democrats.

On February 9, 1987, Apel was back in the seminar and the discussion was on Putnam’s standards of rationality and the question how to relate to reality, especially how to relate to other cultures with mutual, symmetric understanding. Apel suggested a principle of charity and immediately Habermas claimed that it was not possible - in the sense of not allowed or not desirable - to bring forward claims to validity without at the same time stating how one would realize such claims. It must be made clear how one would realize the claim to validity and this condition to validity must be explained and discussed.

The validity-condition to a claim to the validity of a social realization of dignity consists of the social realization of the concept dignity. I would like to take the concept of dignity from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): Dignity is the equality of freedom, liberty and rights of all women, men and queer. If I want to discuss the social realization of dignity, I must look at the social realization of all the rights that the UDHR inseparably links to dignity. Aharon Barak, a professor of law and from 1995 to 2006 president of the Supreme Court of Israel, describes “dignity” as “a value or a principle that is recognized expressly or implied by a constitution” as “the constitutional value of human dignity” (Barak, Aharon. 2013. “Human Dignity: The Constitutional Value and the Constitutional Right.” In Understanding Human Dignity, edited by Christopher McCrudden. Proceedings of the British Academy 192, 359–80. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 359). Barak claims that “the constitutional value of human dignity which is common to most constitutional rights serves to strengthen the unique constitutional value characterizing each specific right” (ibid. 365).

Rights are legitimate claims held by individuals and individuals organized into groups, communities, or states; lawyers call rights “entitlements” (Gibson, John S. 1996. Dictionary of International Human Rights Law. The Scarecrow Press: London. vii). Gibson is clear about the fact that “a right in a treaty is an ideal unless it is implemented as a law” (ibid. 15). This means that human rights are socially realized if they are implemented and “implementation of human rights is the elevating of the right in a treaty or other source in law to the realization of its enjoyment by humans” (ibid.). Implementation of human rights by international conventions was realized in 1976 with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). It is no coincidence that at the same time Jürgen Habermas’ philosophy of communicative competence leads to the development of an understanding of speech-acts as the social realization of dignity. All of Habermas’ work serves the intention to secure, enhance, and develop democratic public and state life in the post-World War II German Federal Republic.

Today the constitutional value of dignity is common to most constitutional rights in liberal democratic constitutions (Barak 2013. 365). The problem is that only 8% of world population live in a full democracy which respects basic political freedoms and civil liberties; where political culture enhances democracy, the government functions well, and media are independent and diverse. 37,3% of world population reside in a flawed democracy; there are free and fair elections but infringements on media freedom, only basic civil liberties are respected, there are problems in governance, an underdeveloped political culture, and low levels of political participation. 17,8% of the world population live in hybrid regimes. “More than one-third of the world’s population live under authoritarian rule (36.9%), with a large share of them being in China and Russia” (Democracy Index 2022. Frontline democracy and the battle for Ukraine. ©The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2023. 3. eiu-democracy-index-2023.pdf). Problematizing the pragmatic units of speech-act that are institutional language performances and problematizing claims to validity and validity conditions must problematize these precarious social possibility-conditions for realizing dignity in discourse. Growing precarious democratic conditions are inseparable from the destabilizing ways of the Anthropocene that are threatening a stable and resilient Earth system, the foundation of cultures on planet earth.

Consequences of existential ethical choices in the Anthropocene.

Ethics is the inquiry of what is good, what is beautiful, what do I really want to do? What is valuable, and what is the sense of life, are questions of ethics. Ethics speaks in the first person singular and gives testimony to a personal choice that is a free decision.

Since the 1950ies, the explosive growth of the insatiable burning of the natural resources of planet earth for energy production, causes a direct destabilizing impact on Earth’s life support system (Earth for All. A Report of the Club of Rome. 2022.15). In 1972 The Club of Rome published The Limits of Growth, by 2000 CE “Earth has entered a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene” (ibid. 13). Women, men and queer are changing the geology of planet earth. In terms of overall energy consumption, the United States are consuming the most oil and China the most electricity. “Although many factors contribute to a given country's energy consumption—level of industrial development, geographical size, standard of living—the single most influential factor is population. This point is supported by the facts that China, the U.S., and third-place India are the world's three most populous countries” (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/energy-consumption-by-country). In 2020 China consumed 145,46 billion Kilowatt-hours (kWh), the United States 87,79, India 31,98, Russia 28,31, Japan 17,03, Canada 13,63, Germany 12,11, Iran 12,03, Brazil 12,01, and South Korea 11,79 kWh (ibid.). Japan, Canada, Germany, and South Korea rank as full democracies; United States, Brazil, and India as flawed democracies and Russia, Iran and China rank as authoritarian regimes (Democracy Index 2022. Frontline democracy and the battle for Ukraine. ©The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2023. 7-11. eiu-democracy-index-2023.pdf).

The Earth4All model shows the potential consequences of continuing world development along the same dynamics as from 1980 to 2020: “The overall global result is a slowing population growth and world economic growth to 2050 and beyond”, “declining labor participation rates, declining trust in government, a steady increase in the ecological footprint, and rising loss in biodiversity” ((Earth for All. A Report of the Club of Rome. 2022. 35). In most of the world poverty will persist, inequality will continue destabilizing the rich world, “overall, there is a dramatic rise in the Social Tension Index” (ibid.). “There is some progress toward living with planetary boundaries”, and “although the scenario does not result in an overt global ecological or climate collapse this century, the likelihood of societal collapse nevertheless rises throughout the decades to 2050” (ibid.). The most vulnerable, badly governed, and ecologically critical economies will see the worst deepening of social divisions and environmental damage (ibid. 36). In this too little too late scenario beyond 2050 “there are migrations as countries near the equator become increasingly too hot to live in. Trade wars erupt as regions fight for ownership of knowledge, market shares, and resources. Supply chains falter due to extreme events. Government spending is increasingly spent on crisis and adaption, leaving less for long-term social and economic development. Soil quality is falling, affecting yields and creating food price volatility (ibid. 41). “The world misses climate targets set out in the Paris Agreement. Earth crashes through the 2ºC boundary around 2050 and reaches a catastrophic 2,5ºC before 2100” (ibid.). “Civilization has lost its greatest foundation: a stable and resilient Earth system” (ibid. 42).

What will happen in a giant leap scenario? “Early in the 2020s, nations agree to start transforming international financial institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization. Their mandates are dramatically shifted to support green transition investment in climate, sustainability, and wellbeing, rather than just economic growth and financial stability in a narrow sense” (ibid. 45). Investment in education, health, and infrastructure, in technologies of solar, wind, batteries, and electric vehicles will raise the wellbeing and diminish the share of fossil fuels in the energy system (ibid. 46). Beyond 2050 we will see that “with improving wellbeing levels, citizens rediscover trust in governments… This leads to increasingly thriving societies that are resilient to shocks (ibid. 50).

There is no doubt: We have a choice! Either we do a little bit too late, or we decide to realize the giant leap scenario. The Earth4All model presents us with precious impact assessment for the choices we have concerning our Earth system. The model demonstrates once again the logical knowledge that acting has consequences but non-acting also has consequences. Ethically we are responsible for the choice we take. Problematizing the choices, the claims to validity and the conditions of validity is not an easy task, and every woman, man and queer is called to take part in the discourse.